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15 May 2013

Posted on May 16, 2013

Mormonism in the News: Getting It Right

May 15, 2013

Mormon Newsroom

This edition of “Mormonism in the News: Getting It Right” features a column from an Episcopal priest who demonstrates the importance of speaking with Mormons to understand Mormons. We also include a blog post that discusses Mormon beliefs about grace and a story from Kansas about a returned Mormon missionary who describes the purposes of his service.

What did it mean in the Book of Commandments to say that Oliver Cowdery had the gift of working with the “rod of nature.” What is the “gift of Aaron?” Are there other examples of physical objects being used to receive revelation? In this episode of Religion Today, which originally aired on KSL Radio on January 13, 2013, Martin Tanner responds to this question and discusses many of the anti-Mormon attacks. Further discussion of this topic can be found at the FAIR Wiki.

Elder Blake Oliver received a special send-off at the Missionary Training Center in Provo on Wednesday. Having recently completed Marine Corps boot camp, now Lance Cpl. Oliver was greeted by his recruiters Staff Sgt. Shawn Skaggs, Staff Sgt. Jeff Brasfield and Sgt. Gustavo Bustos outside the MTC before Oliver began a different form of basic training to prepare for his service in the California West Los Angeles Mission.

Was Anti-Mormon Sentiment on “Survivor” Responsible For Dawn’s Demise?

May 15, 2013

Patheos

If you’re like me, you love the first episode of every Survivor season, when people from completely different backgrounds are stuck on an island and forced to live together and work together until… well, every person gets voted off but the sole Survivor. It’s a brilliant concept that’s only gotten better with age.

But the 26th season displayed a troubling undercurrent of religious hostility and double standards when the show’s contestants managed to demonize, humiliate, and mock a Mormon contestant beyond the show’s normal constraints.

Girl testifies LDS mission change helped her get out of sex relationship with coach

May 15, 2013

Standard Examiner (Utah)

A 17-year-old girl testified it was the announcement that 19-year-old women can serve missions for the LDS Church that helped her get out of a sexual relationship with the man who was her former science teacher and basketball coach.

The girl, who is not being named because the Standard-Examiner has a policy of not identifying victims of sexual crimes, was the only witness who testified in a 90-minute preliminary hearing for Stephen Paul Niedzwiecki, 33, of Kaysville, in 2nd District Court on Tuesday.

Liza Morong, a 21-year-old theater major living in Boston, considers her 2011 conversion to the Mormon faith a blessing — and says she owes it all to satirical Broadway musical The Book of Mormon.

Penned by South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone and Avenue Q composer and lyricist Robert Lopez, the play follows the misadventures of two young Mormon missionaries as they attempt to spread their faith to the inhabitants of a remote village in northern Uganda.

The musical is meant to be taken as a reflection on the overly literal application of religious dogma, but Morong instead saw it as a perfect jumping off point to learning more about the Mormon faith.

The smash Broadway Musical The Book of Mormon, written by the creators of South Park, didn’t set out to endear anyone to the faith. But a few months after seeing the show, Suffolk University theater studies major Liza Morong, 21, was baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Morong’s story, published in Salt Lake City’s Desert News last week, is attracting some understandable attention this week from blogs like Huffington Post and Gawker because, as she writes on her own Tumblr, “the book of Mormon musical [led] me to the Mormon church,” which should be surprising to anyone who has left that musical with something less than a religious epiphany.

I like novels and books from small presses, the independents, those that rely on Kindle, Nook, Smashwords, word-of-mouth … for sales. I read two novels and one scholarly book, from respectively, Strange Violin Editions, Leicester Bay Books, and Xlibris. They are Byuck, a novel by Theric Jepson, well known in the Mormon literary scene, The Hand of Glory, by Stephen Carter, another fixture in Mormon lit, and German Leaves: Opposing Nazi Cannons with Words, by retired academic Ralph P. Vander Heide, a resident of Ogden.

Just a few months ago, the Legislature repeated its demand that the federal government surrender 30 million acres of public lands to Utah so the state can make more money on them.

That’s just the sort of thinking that the Mormon Environmental Stewardship Alliance (MESA) deplores, and why it wants its followers — more than 1,300 in more than 15 countries — to remember LDS teachings to revere the Earth, its sanctity, its people and the need to preserve it for generations to come.

I always loved it. I can remember painting at my grandma’s kitchen table when I was 6. It was something I wanted to do … and when I went to high school in Utah, there was a Mormon seminary class that you took as a regular class in school. I wasn’t Mormon, so I just took art instead. The real passion is just making anything, creating anything … like, for example, I just made my own concrete countertops for my house. I was just as excited about doing that. Making anything is a passion and what I like to do … and making art just fits into that.

The Mormon and Catholic churches both officially denounce homosexuality, yet their Scouting branches — the largest and third largest within the BSA, respectively — have signaled a willingness to endorse the current proposal lifting the ban on gay youths only.

NOTE: This is posted for those who are interested in keeping abreast what is being said around the world about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its members. MormonVoices cannot and does not guarantee the validity or truthfulness of any information reported. The responsibility for the interpretation and use of this information lies with the reader. As all information comes from other news sources and has not been independently verified, MormonVoices cannot guarantee or be responsible for the security of links in the clipping service. MormonVoices will attempt as much as possible to exclude news articles containing strongly offensive language or which lead to offensive images, but cannot guarantee that some will not slip through.

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